Idle Hands Are the Work of the Devil

In 1978 as a freshly minted RN I was one of the first planes to land after the Blizzard of ’78. I descended upon Boston from the Deep South. The roads were all closed due to six feet of snow. I was dropped off at a motel after sharing a cab ride with six complete strangers and sat in the parking lot on my suitcase in the dirty snow waiting for my ride to my new grandmother’s house. I was apolitical at the time.

Years later, Boston would foment in me a free thinker. Someone who would sail the Charles River and be unafraid if the boat capsized. I was someone independent from the mentality that the government should subsidize everyone. As a young woman, I saw the complete idiocy of UNION dictating who you should vote for. I witnessed firsthand the deliberate handouts for votes and poverty in the housing projects I would not let my dogs fleas live in. The generations of folks who grew up in the mentality that everything was free, created generations of helpless who also lived in the projects. There was no hand up from the handout. This was a lifestyle for many Boston residents. Subsidized housing, subsidized electricity, subsidized food. All free, paid for by taxpayers. Some even got college subsidies and even earned degrees, yet their entitlement mentality remained so ingrained they felt they deserved more.

When I worked with the homeless mentally Ill, I witnessed them getting free disability checks retroactive to when the government decided they became mentally ill. They received as much as $40,000.00 yet refused to move out of the shelter. They refused to spend their free money on housing. I worked with a mental health worker named Heather, who was a single mother. She told me I should rent one of my three family apartments to her cheaper because she was a single mother and grew up in the projects. Really? I reminded her no one was subsidizing my house payment and I needed to make market rate rent to pay my mortgage. She did not like that one bit.

Landlords in Cambridge and some parts of Boston were only allowed to get $200/ monthly if the city had labeled their units “rent controlled”. That meant they were forced to subsidize the poor, or elderly. Where is the fairness to a working taxpaying citizen who purchased such a home? Who was going to rehabilitate these buildings if they were not making a profit?

I say all this because this is part of the world of Obama, whose college was Saudi-subsidized in his “land of anti-pro-independence and handout” worldview. The mentality of “give the man a fish” versus teaching him to fish is what put us in this entire mess. Making humans into leeches, versus letting them make their way in the world and thinking for themselves is what that handout mentality creates. Some psychiatrists call it “Learned Helplessness”. It makes folks dependent and it takes away self -esteem.

I wonder how the terrorists who did the Boston Bombing were subsidized? I certainly never had the money to travel for six months to another country. When I was in Boston, I couldn’t afford UMASS, nor could I afford to pay my rent for that long and be out of the country. Who paid their rent? Who paid their school? Who paid their travel expenses? Who made sure they were sent to the best schools in Boston? Who navigated the paperwork for them to get admitted to Boston Latin, or UMass Dartmouth? Where did they get their money for gas, food and lodging?

I am sure the good people of Boston never intended for their hospitality and generosity to be a reason to hate them and bomb them! Yet the irony of a dependent person is they do hate and resent the very hand they are dependent upon. They despise their dependency internally. They really learn helplessness and know they cannot do things on their own. Ironically if they did accomplish on their own they would have their own minds and be busy leading productive lives and working to pay their own way in this world. Perhaps they wouldn’t have had time to entertain pressure-cooking bombing plots? Perhaps they would have integrated into society with some self- esteem and positive social encounters?

Well we will never know now since that is not what happened. What I do know for sure is the old axiom: Idle hands are the work of the devil.

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